The above is a quote by Max Weinreich, an early 20th scholar of the Yiddish language. MIT Linguistics professor Michel Degraff quoted him in his excellent Pecha Kucha talk on Haitian Creole last month. Michel Degraff is a Creolistics expert and is often citing for his research on the relation between Creole and imperialist histories.
Tout moun se moun– every person is a person
There are a lot of misunderstandings about language and literacy in Haiti. Many believe that French is the official language of Haiti, while it is actually Haitian Creole. Only around 5-10 percent of Haitians are fluent in French. But even though Haitian Creole is the official language, many of the school books, official documents and communication are published in French. The literacy rate is often measured in terms of French. As recently as 2004, a Reuters journalist published an article on prostitution in Haiti referring to Haitian Creole as Haiti’s language of broken French.
http://matenwaclc.org Yves Dejean and his son Frisler at their Kreyòl-instruction school Sant Twa Ti Flè in Pòwòyal
Creole languages are developed during the colonisation of nations and the introduction of slaves. Because spoken by the ‘low class’ portion of the population, there is a bias to consider Creole inferior as a language as well. This bias exists to this day. When I was looking into enabling multi-lingual functionality on this site, I was struck by the fact that Haitian Creole was not presented as one of the options! (and speaking of this, if you can help with translating the site, please contact me (Nadya Peek)
“Notice: The artist is not dead. Call 3907-9920 for your shirt-printing jobs.” (Delmas 33, February, 22, 2010, photo by Dr. Evelyne Ancion DeGraff)
If you want to learn more about Michel Degraff’s work, do contact him!
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